A Book of Autographs

We have
before us a volume of autograph letters,
chiefly of soldiers and statesmen of the Revolution,
and addressed to a good and brave man, General
Palmer, who himself drew his sword in the cause.
They are profitable reading in a quiet afternoon, and
in a mood withdrawn from too intimate relation with
the present time; so that we can glide backward some
three quarters of a century, and surround ourselves
with the ominous suhumity of circumstances that then
frowned upon the writers. To give them their full
effect, we shonid imagine that these letters have this
moment been brought to town by the splashed and
way-worn post-rider, or perhaps by an orderly
dragoon, who has ridden in a perilous hurry to deliver his
despatches. They are magic scrolls, if read in the
right spirit. The roll of the drum and the fanfare of
the trumpet is latent in some of them; and in others,
an echo of the oratory that resounded in the old halls
of the Continental Congress, at Philadelphia; or the
words may come to us as with the living utterance of
one of those illustrious men, speaking face to face, in
friendly communion. Strange, that the mere identity
of paper and ink should be so powerful. The same
thoughts might look cold and ineffectual, in a printed
book. Human nature craves a certain materialism,
and clings pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if that
were of more importance than the spirit accidentally
involved in it. And, in truth, the original manuscript
has always something which print itself must
inevitably lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual
irregularity of hand, and all such little imperfections of
mechanical execution, bring us close to the writer, and
perhaps convey some of those subtle intimations for
which language has no shape.

There are
several letters from John Adams, written
in a small, hasty, ungraceful hand, but earnest, and
with no unnecessary flourish. The earliest is dated at
Philadelphia, September 26, 1774, about twenty days
after the first opening of the Continental Congress.
We look at this old yellow document, scribbled on half
a sheet of foolscap, and ask of it many questions for
which words have no response. We would fain know
what were their mutual impressions, when all those
venerable faces, that have since been traced on steel,
or chiselled out of marble, and thus made familiar to
posterity, first met one another's gaze! Did one spirit
harmonize them, in spite of the dissimilitude of
manners between the North and the South, which were
now for the first time brought into political relations?
Could the Virginian descendant of the Cavaliers, and
the New-Englander with his hereditary
Puritanism,--the aristocratic Southern planter, and the
self-made man from Massachusetts or Connecticut,--at once
feel that they were countrymen and brothers? What
did John Adams think of Jefferson?--and Samuel
Adams of Patrick Henry? Did not North and South
combine in their deference for the sage Franklin, so
long the defender of the colonies in England, and
whose scientific renown was already world-wide? And
was there yet any whispered prophecy, any vague
conjecture, circulating among the delegates, as to the
destiny which might be in reserve for one stately man,
who sat, for the most part, silent among them?--what
station he was to assume in the world's history?--and
how many statues would repeat his form and
countenance, and successively crumble beneath his
immortality?

The letter
before us does not answer these inquiries.
Its main feature is the strong expression of the
uncertainty and awe that pervaded even the firm hearts of
the Old Congress, while anticipating the struggle
which was to ensue. "The commencement of
hostilities," it says, "is exceedingly dreaded here. It is
thought that an attack upon the troops, even should
it prove successful, would certainly involve the whole
continent in a war. It is generally thought that the
Ministry would rejoice at a rupture in Boston, because
it would furnish an excuse to the people at home"
[this was the last time, we suspect, that John Adams
spoke of England thus affectionately], "and unite
them in an opinion of the necessity of pushing
hostilities against us."

His next
letter bears on the superscription,
"Favored by General Washington." The date is June 20,
1775, three days after the battle of Bunker Hill, the
news of which could not yet have arrived at
Philadelphia. But the war, so much dreaded, had begun, on
the quiet banks of Concord River; an army of twenty
thousand men was beleaguering Boston; and here was
Washington journeying northward to take the
command. It seems to place us in a nearer relation with
the hero, to find him performing the little courtesy of
bearing a letter between friend and friend, and to hold
in our hands the very document intrusted to such a
messenger. John Adams says simply, "We send you
Generals Washington and Lee for your comfort;" but
adds nothing in regard to the character of the
Commander-in-Chief. This letter displays much of the
writer's ardent temperament; if he had been anywhere
but in the hall of Congress, it would have been in the
intrenchment before Boston.

"I hope,"
he writes, "a good account will be given
of Gage, Haldiman, Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe,
before winter. Such a wretch as Howe, with a statue
m honor of his family in Westminster Abbey, erected
by the Massachusetts, to come over with the design
to cut the throats of the Massachusetts people, is too
much. I most sincerely, coolly, and devoutly wish
that a lucky ball or bayonet may make a signal
example of him, in warning to all such unprincipled,
unsentimental miscreants for the future!"

He goes
on in a strain that smacks somewhat of
aristocratic feeling: "Our camp will be an illustrious
school of military virtue, and will be resorted to and
frequented, as such, by gentlemen in great numhers
from the other colonies." The term "gentleman"
has seldom been used in this sense subsequently to the
Revolution. Another letter introduces us to two of
these gentlemen, Messrs. Acquilla Hall and Josias
Carvill, volunteers, who are recommended as "of the
first families in Maryland, and possessing
independent fortunes."

After the
British had been driven out of Boston,
Adams cries out, " Fortify, fortify; and never let them
get in again!" It is agreeable enough to perceive
the filial affection with which John Adams, and the
other delegates from the North, regard New England,
and especially the good old capital of the Puritans.
Their love of country was hardly yet so diluted as to
extend over the whole thirteen colonies, which were
orírather looked upon as allies than as composing one
nation. In truth, the patriotism of a citizen of the
United States is a sentiment by itself of a peculiar
nature, and requiring a lifetime, or at least the custom
of many years, to naturalize it among the other
possessions of the heart.

The collection
is enriched by a letter--dated
"Cambridge, August 26, 1775"--from Washington
himself. He wrote it in that house,--now so
venerable with his memory,--in that very room, where his
bust now stands upon a poet's table; from this sheet
of paper passed the hand that held the leading-staff!
Nothing can he more perfectly in keeping with all
other manifestations of Washington than the whole
visible aspect and embodiment of this letter. The
manuscript is as clear as daylight; the punctuation
exact, to a comma. There is a calm accuracy
throughout, which seems the production of a species of
intelligence that cannot err, and which, if we may so speak,
would affect us with a more human warmth, if we
could conceive it capable of some slight human error.
The chirography is characterized by a plain and easy
grace, which, in the signature, is somewhat elaborated,
and becomes a type of the personal manner of a
gentleman of the old school, but without detriment to the
truth and clearness that distinguish the rest of the
manuscript. The lines are as straight and
equidistant as if ruled; and, from beginning to end, there is
no physical symptom--as how should there be?--of
a varying mood, of jets of emotion, or any of those
fluctuating feelings that pass from the hearts into the
fingers of common men. The paper itself (like most
of those Revolutionary letters, which are written on
fabrics fit to endure the burden of ponderous and
earnest thought) is stout, and of excellent quality, and
bears the water-mark of Britannia, surmounted by the
Crown. The subject of the letter is a statement of
reasons for not taking possession of Point Alderton;
a position commanding the entrance of Boston
Harbor. After explaining the difficulties of the case,
arising from his want of men and munitions for the
adequate defence of the lines which he already
occupies, Washington proceeds: "To you, sir, who are a
well-wisher to the cause, and can reason upon the
effects of such conduct, I may open myself with
freedom, because no improper disclosures will be made of
our situation. But I cannot expose my weakness to
the enemy (though I believe they are pretty well
informed of everything that passes), by telling this and
that man, who are daily pointing out this, and that,
and t' other place, of all the motives that govern my
actions; notwithstanding I know what will be the
consequence of not doing it,--namely, that I shall be
accused of inattention to the public service, and perhaps
of want of spirit to prosecute it. But this shall have
no effect upon my conduct. I will steadily (as far as
my judgment will assist me) pursue such measures as
I think conducive to the interest of the cause, and rest
satisfied under any obloquy that shall be thrown,
conscious of having discharged my duty to the best of my
abilities."

The above
passage, like every other passage that
could be quoted from his pen, is characteristic of
Washington, and entirely in keeping with the calm
elevation of his soul. Yet how imperfect a glimpse
do we obtain of him, through the medium of this or
any of his letters! We imagine him writing calmly,
with a hand that never falters; his majestic face
neither darkens nor gleams with any momentary
ebullition of feeling, or irregularity of thought; and thus
flows forth an expression precisely to the extent of his
purpose, no more, no less. Thus much we may
conceive. But still we have not grasped the man; we
have caught no glimpse of his interior; we have not
detected his personality. It is the same with all the
recorded traits of his daily life. The collection of
them, by different observers, seems sufficiently
abundant, and strictly harmonizes with itself, yet never
brings us into intimate relationship with the hero, nor
makes us feel the warmth and the human throb of his
heart. What can be the reason? Is it, that his great
nature was adapted to stand in relation to his country,
as man stands towards man, but could not
individualize itself in brotherhood to an individual?

There are
two from Franklin, the earliest dated,
"London, August 8, 1767," and addressed to "Mrs.
Franklin, at Philadelphia." He was then in England,
as agent for the colonies in their resistance to the
oppressive policy of Mr. Grenville's administration. The
letter, however, makes no reference to political or other
business. It contains only ten or twelve lines,
beginning, "My dear child," and conveying an impression
of long and venerable matrimony which has lost all its
romance, but retained a familiar and quiet tenderness.
He speaks of making a little excursion into the
country for his health; mentions a larger letter, despatched
by another vessel; alludes with homely affability to
"Mrs. Stevenson," "Sally," and
"our dear Polly"
desires to be remembered to "all inquiring friends"
and signs himself, "Your ever loving husband." In
this conjugal epistle, brief and unimportant as it is,
there are the elements that summon up the past, and
enable us to create anew the man, his connections and
circumstances. We can see the sage in his London
lodgings,--with his wig cast aside, and replaced by a
velvet cap,--penning this very letter; and then can
step across the Atlantic, and behold its reception by
the elderly, but still comely, Madam Franklin, who
breaks the seal and begins to read, first remembering
to put on her spectacles. The seal, by the way, is a
pompous one of armorial bearings, rather symbolical
of the dignity of the Colonial Agent, and Postmaster
General of America, than of the humble origin of the
Philadelphia printer. The writing is in the free, quick
style of a man with great practice of the pen, and is
particularly agreeable to the reader.

Another letter
from the same famous hand is
addressed to General Palmer, and dated, "Passy,
October 27, 1779." By an indorsement on the outside it
appears to have been transmitted to the United States
through the medium of Lafayette. Franklin was now
the ambassador of his country at the Court of
Versailles, enjoying an immense celebrity, caressed by the
French ladies, and idolized alike by the fashionable
and the learned, who saw something sublime and
philosophic even in his blue yarn stockings. Still, as
before, he writes with the homeliness and simplicity that
cause a human face to look forth from the old, yellow
sheet of paper, and in words that make our ears
re-echo, as with the sound of his long-extinct utterance.
Yet this brief epistle, like the former, has so little of
tangible matter that we are ashamed to copy it.

Next, we
come to the fragment of a letter by
Samuel Adams; an autograph more utterly devoid of
ornament or flourish than any other in the collection. It
would not have been characteristic, had his pen traced
so much as a hair-line in tribute to grace, beauty, or
the elaborateness of manner; for this earnest-hearted
man had been produced out of the past elements of his
native land, a real Puritan, with the religion of his
forefathers, and likewise with their principles of
government, taking the aspect of Revolutionary politics.
At heart, Samuel Adams was never so much a citizen
of the United States as he was a New-Englander, and
a son of the old Bay Province. The following passage
has much of the man in it: "I heartily congratulate
you," he writes from Philadelphia, after the British
have left Boston, "upon the sudden and important
change in our affairs, in the removal of the
barbarians from the capital. We owe our grateful
acknowledgments to Him who is, as he is frequently styled in
Sacred Writ, 'The Lord of Hosts.' We' have not yet
been informed with certainty what course the enemy
have steered. I hope we shall be on our guard against
future attempts. Will not care be taken to fortify the
harbor, and thereby prevent the entrance of
ships-of-war hereafter?"

From Hancock,
we have only the envelope of a
document "on public service,"
directed to "The Hon. the
Assembly, or Council of Safety of New
Hampshire,--and with the autograph affixed, that stands out so
prominently in the Declaration of Independence. As
seen in the engraving of that instrument, the signature
looks precisely what we should expect and desire in
the handwriting of a princely merchant, whose
penmanship had been practised in the ledger which he is
represented as holding, in Copley's brilliant picture,
but to whom his native ability, and the circumstances
and customs of his country, had given a place among
its rulers. But, on the coarse and dingy paper before
us, the effect is very much inferior; the direction, all
except the signature, is a scrawl, large and heavy, but
not forcible; and even the name itself, while almost
identical in its strokes with that of the Declaration,
has a strangely different and more vulgar aspect.
Perhaps it is all right, and typical of the truth. If
we may trust tradition, and unpublished letters, and a
few witnesses in point, there was quite as much
difference between the actual man and his historical aspect,
as between the manuscript signature and the engraved
one. One of his associates, both in political life and
permanent renown, is said to have characterized him
as a "man without a head or heart." We, of an after
generation, should hardly be entitled, on whatever
evidence, to assume such ungracious liberty with a name
that has occupied a lofty position until it has grown
almost sacred, and which is associated with memories
more sacred than itself, and has thus become a
valuable reality to our countrymen, by the aged reverence
that clusters round about it. Nevertheless, it may be
no impiety to regard Hancock not precisely as a real
personage, but as a majestic figure, useful and
necessary in its way, but producing its effect far more by
an ornamental outside than by any intrinsic force or
virtue. The page of all history would be half
unpeopled if all such characters were banished from it.

From General
Warren we have a letter dated
January 14, 1775, only a few months before he attested
the sincerity of his patriotism, in his own blood, on
Bunker Hill. His handwriting has many ungraceful
flourishes. All the small d's spout upward in
parabolic curves, and descend at a considerable distance.
His pen seems to have had nothing but hair-lines in
it; and the whole letter, though perfectly legible, has
a look of thin and unpleasant irregularity. The
subject is a plan for securing to the colonial party the
services of Colonel Gridley the engineer, by an appeal
to his private interests. Though writing to General
Palmer, an intimate friend, Warren signs himself,
most ceremoniously, "Your obedient servant."
Indeed, these stately formulas in winding up a letter
were scarcely laid aside, whatever might be the
familiarity of intercourse: husband and wife were
occasionally, on paper at least, the "obedient
servants" of one
another; and not improbably, among well-bred
people, there was a corresponding ceremonial of bows and
courtesies, even in the deepest interior of domestic life.
With all the reality that filled men's hearts, and which
has stamped its impress on so many of these letters,
it was a far more formal age than the present.

It may
be remarked that Warren was almost the
only man eminently distinguished in the intellectual
phase of the Revolution, previous to the breaking out
of the war, who actually uplifted his arm to do battle.
The legislative patriots were a distinct class from the
patriots of the camp, and never laid aside the gown
for the sword. It was very different in the great civil
war of England, where the leading minds of the age,
when argument had done its office, or left it undone,
put on their steel breast-plates and appeared as
leaders in the field. Educated young men, members of
the old colonial families,--gentlemen, as John Adams
terms them,--seem not to have sought employment
in the Revolutionary army, in such numbers as might
have been expected. Respectable as the officers
generally were, and great as were the abilities sometimes
elicited, the intellect and cultivation of the country
was inadequately represented in them, as a body.

Turning another
page, we find the frank of a letter
from Henry Laurens, President of Congress,--him
whose destiny it was, like so many noble men of old, to
pass beneath the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of
London, him whose chivalrous son sacrificed as brilliant
a future as any young American could have looked
forward to, in an obscure skirmish. Likewise, we
have the address of a letter to Messrs. Leroy and
Bayard, in the handwriting of Jefferson; too slender a
material to serve as a talisman for summoning up the
writer; a most unsatisfactory fragment, affecting us
like a glimpse of the retreating form of the sage of
Monticello, turning the distant corner of a street.
There is a scrap from Robert Morris, the financier;
a letter or two from Judge Jay; and one from General
Lincoln, written, apparently, on the gallop, but without
any of those characteristic sparks that sometimes fly
out in a hurry, when all the leisure in the world would
fail to elicit them. Lincoln was the type of a New
England soldier; a man of fair abilities, not especially
of a warlike cast, without much chivalry, but
faithful and bold, and carrying a kind of decency and
restraint into the wild and ruthless business of arms.

From good
old Baron Steuben, we find not a
manuscript essay on the method of arranging a battle, but
a commercial draft, in a small, neat hand, as plain as
print, elegant without flourish, except a very
complicated one on the signature. On the whole, the
specimen is sufficiently characteristic, as well of the Baron's
soldierlike and German simplicity, as of the polish of
the Great Frederick's aid-de-camp, a man of courts
and of the world. How singular aud picturesque an
effect is produced, in the array of our Revolutionary
army, by the intermingling of these titled personages
from the Continent of Europe, with feudal associations
clinging about them,--Steuben, De Kalb, Pulaski,
Lafayette!--the German veteran, who had written
from one famous battle-field to another for thirty
years; and the young French noble, who had come
hither, though yet unconscious of his high office, to
light the torch that should set fire to the antiquated
trumpery of his native institutions. Among these
autographs, there is one from Lafayette, written long
after our Revolution, but while that of his own
country was in full progress. The note is merely as
follows: "Enclosed you will find, my dear Sir, two
tickets for the sittings of this day. One part of the
debate will be on the Honors of the Pantheon,
agreeably to what has been decreed by the Constitutional
Assembly."

It is
a pleasant and comfortable thought, that we
have no such classic folly as is here indicated, to lay
to the charge of our Revolutionary fathers. Both in
their acts, and in the drapery of those acts, they were
true to their several and simple selves, and thus left
nothing behind them for a fastidious taste to sneer at.
But it must be considered that our Revolution did not,
like that of France, go so deep as to disturb the
common-sense of the country.

General Schuyler
writes a letter, under date of
February 22, 1780, relating not to military affairs, from
which the prejudices of his countrymen had almost
disconnected him, but to the Salt Springs of
Onondaga. The expression is peculiarly direct, and the
hand that of a man of business, free and flowing. The
uncertainty, the vague, hearsay evidence respecting
these springs, then gushing into dim daylight beneath
the shadow of a remote wilderness, is such as might
now be quoted in reference to the quality of the water
that supplies the fountains of the Nile. The following
sentence shows us an Indian woman and her son,
practising their simple process in the manufacture of salt,
at a fire of wind-strewn boughs, the flame of which
gleams duskily through the arches of the forest
"From a variety of information, I find the smallest
quantity made by a squaw, with the assistance of one
boy, with a kettle of about ten gallons' capacity, is
half a bushel per day; the greatest, with the same
kettle, about two bushels." It is particularly interesting
to find out anything as to the embryo, yet stationary
arts of life among the red people, their manufactures,
their agriculture, their domestic labors. It is partly
the lack of this knowledge--the possession of which
would establish a ground of sympathy on the part of
civilized men--that makes the Indian race so
shadow-like and unreal to our conception.

We could
not select a greater contrast to the
upright and unselfish patriot whom we have just spoken
of, than the traitor Arnold, from whom there is a
brief note, dated, "Crown Point, January 19, 1775,"
addressed to an officer under his command. The three
lines of which it consists can prove bad spelling,
erroneous grammar, and misplaced and superfluous
punctuation; but, with all this complication of iniquity,
the ruffian General contrives to express his meaning
as briefly and clearly as if the rules of correct
composition had been ever so scrupulously observed. This
autograph, impressed with the foulest name in our
history, has somewhat of the interest that would attach
to a document on which a fiend-devoted wretch had
signed away his salvation. But there was not
substance enough in the man--a mere cross between the
bull-dog and the fox--to justify much feeling of any
sort about him personally. The interest, such as it
is, attaches but little to the man, and far more to the
circumstances amid which he acted, rendering the
villany almost sublime, while, exercised in petty affairs,
would only have been vulgar.

We turn
another leaf, and find a memorial of
Hamilton. It is but a letter of introduction, addressed to
Governor Jay in favor of Mr. Davies, of Kentucky;
but it gives an impression of high breeding and
courtesy, as little to be mistaken as if we could see the
writer's manner and hear his cultivated accents, while
personally making one gentleman known to another.
There is likewise a rare vigor of expression and
pregnancy of meaning, such as only a man of habitual
energy of thought could have conveyed into so
commonplace a thing as an introductory letter. This
autograph is a graceful one, with an easy and picturesque
flourish beneath the signature, symbolical of a
courteous bow at the conclusion of the social ceremony so
admirably performed. Hamilton might well be the
leader and idol of the Federalists; for he was
preeminent in all the high qualities that characterized the
great men of that party, and which should make even
a Democrat feel proud that his country had produced
such a noble old band of aristocrats; and he shared all
the distrust of the people, which so inevitably and so
righteously brought about their ruin. With his
autograph we associate that of another Federalist, his
friend in life; a man far narrower than Hamilton, but
emdowed with a native vigor, that caused many
partisans to grapple to him for support; upright, sternly
inflexible, and of a simplicity of manner that might have
befitted the sturdiest republican among us. In our
boyhood we used to see a thin, severe figure of an
ancient man, time-worn, but apparently indestructible,
moving with a step of vigorous decay along the street,
and knew him as "Old Tim Pickering."

Side by
side, too, with the autograph of Hamilton,
we would place one from the hand that shed his blood.
It is a few lines of Aaron Burr, written in 1823
when all his ambitious schemes, whatever they once
were, had been so long shattered that even the
fragments had crumbled away, leaving him to exert his
withered energies on petty law cases, to one of which
the present note refers. The hand is a little tremulous
with age, yet small and fastidiously elegant, as became
a man who was in the habit of writing billet-doux on
scented note-paper, as well as documents of war and
state. This is to us a deeply interesting autograph.
Remembering what has been said of the power of
Burr's personal influence, his art to tempt men, his
might to subdue them, and the fascination that
enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the love of
woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into
his own inscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of
his nature. How singular that a character imperfect,
ruined, blasted, as this man's was, excites a stronger
interest than if it had reached the highest earthly
perfection of which its original elements would admit!
It is by the diabolical part of Burr's character that he
produces his effect on the imagination. Had he been
a better man, we doubt, after all, whether the present
age would not already have suffered him to wax dusty,
and fade out of sight, among the mere respectable
mediocrities of his own epoch. But, certainly, he was a
strange, wild off-shoot to have sprung from the united
stock of those two singular Christians, President Burr
of Princeton College, and Jonathan Edwards!

Omitting many,
we have come almost to the end of
these memorials of historical men. We observe one
other autograph of a distinguished soldier of the
Revolution, Henry Knox, but written in 1791, when
he was Secretary of War. In its physical aspect,
it is well worthy to be a soldier's letter. The
hand is large, round, and legible at a glance;
the lines far apart, and accurately equidistant;
and the whole affair looks not unlike a company of
regular troops in marching order. The signature
has a point-like firmness and simplicity. It is a
curious observation, sustained by these
autographs, though we know not how generally
correct, that Southern gentlemen are more addicted
to a flourish of the pen beneath their names, than
those of the North.

And now
we come to the men of a later generation,
whose active life reaches almost within the verge
of present affairs; people of dignity, no doubt,
but whose characters have not acquired, either
from time or circumstances, the interest that can
make their autographs valuable to any but the
collector. Those whom we have hitherto noticed
were the men of an heroic age. They are departed,
and now so utterly departed, as not even to touch
upon the passing generation through the medium of
persons still in life, who can claim to have known
them familiarly. Their letters, therefore, come
to us like material things out of the hands of
mighty shadows, long historical, and traditionary,
and fit companions for the sages and warriors of a
thousand years ago. In spite of the proverb, it
is not in a single day, or in a very few years,
that a man can be reckoned "as dead as Julius
Caesar." We feel little interest in scraps
from the pens of old gentlemen, ambasadors,
governors, senators, heads of departments,
even presidents though they were, who
lived lives of praiseworthy respectability, and
whose powdered heads and black knee-breeches have
but just vanished out of the drawing-room. Still
less do we value the blotted paper of those whose
reputations are dusty, not with oblivious time,
but with present political turmoil and newspaper
vogue. Really great men, however, seem, as to
their effect on the imagination, to take their
place amongst past worthies, even while walking in
the very sunshine that illuminates the autumnal
day in which we write. We look, not without
curiosity, at the small, neat hand of Henry Clay,
who, as he remarks with his habitual deference to
the wishes of the fair, responds to a young lady's
request for his seal; and we dwell longer over the
torn-off conclusion of a note from Mr. Calhoun,
whose words are strangely dashed off without
letters, and whose name, were it less illustrious,
would be unrecognizable in his own autograph. But
of all hands that can still grasp a pen, we know
not the one, belonging to a soldier or a
statesman, which could interest us more than the
hand that wrote the following: "Sir, your
note of the 6th inst. is received. I hasten to
answer that there was no man 'in the station of
colonel, by the name of J. T. Smith,' under my
command, at the battle of New Orleans; and am,
respectfully,

The old
general, we suspect, has been insnared by
a pardonable little stratagem on the part of the
autograph collector. The battle of New Orleans
would hardly have been won, without better aid
than this problematical Colonel J. T. Smith.

Intermixed with
and appended to these historical
autographs, there are a few literary ones.
Timothy Dwight--the "old Timotheus" who
sang the Conquest of Canaan, instead of choosing a
more popular subject, in the British Conquest of
Canada--is of eldest date. Colonel Trumbull,
whose hand, at various epochs of his life, was
familiar with sword, pen, and pencil, contributes
two letters, which lack the picturesqueness of
execution that should distinguish the chirography
of an artist. The value of Trumbull's pictures is
of the same nature with that of daguerreotypes,
depending not upon the ideal but the actual. The
beautiful signature of Washington Irving appears
as the indorsement of a draft, dated in 1814,
when, if we may take this docuinent as evidence,
his individuality seems to have been merged into
the firm of "P. E. Irving & Co." Never was
anything less mercantile than this autograph,
though as legible as the writing of a bank-clerk.
Without apparently aiming at artistic beauty, it
has all the "Sketch Book" in it. We
find the signature and seal of Pierpont, the
latter stamped with the poet's almost living
countenance. What a pleasant device for a seal is
one's own face, which he may thus multiply at
pleasure, and send letters to his friends,--the
Head without, and the Heart within! There are a
few lines in the school-girl hand of Margaret
Davidson, at nine years old; and a scrap of a
letter from Washington Allston, a gentle and
delicate autograph, in which we catch a glimpse of
thanks to his correspondent for the loan of a
volume of poetry. Nothing remains, save a letter
from Noah Webster, whose early toils were
manifested in a spelling-book, and those of his
later age in a ponderous dictionary. Under date
of February 10, 1843, he writes in a sturdy,
awkward hand, very fit for a lexicographer, an
epistle of old man's reminiscences, from which we.
extract the following anecdote of Washington,
presenting the patriot in a festive light:--

"When I
was travelling to the South, in the
year 1785, I called on General Washington at Mount
Vernon. At dinner, the last course of dishes was
a species of pancakes, which were handed round to
each guest, accompanied with a bowl of sugar and
another of molasses for seasoning them, that each
guest might suit himself. When the dish came to
me, I pushed by me the bowl of molasses, observing
to the gentlemen present, that I had enough of
that in my own country. The General
burst out with a loud laugh, a thing very
unusual with him. 'Ah,' said he, 'there is
nothing in that story about your eating molasses
in New England.' There was a gentleman from
Maryland at the table; and the General
immediately told a story, stating that, during the
Revolution, a hogshead of molasses was stove in,
in West Chester, by the oversetting of a wagon;
and a body of Maryland troops being near, the
soldiers ran hastily, and saved all they could by
filling their hats or caps with molasses."

There are
said to be temperaments endowed with
sympathies so exquisite, that, by merely handling
an autograph, they can detect the writer's
character with unerring accuracy, and read his
inmost heart as easily as a less-gifted eye would
peruse the written page. Our faith in this power,
be it a spiritual one, or only a refinement of the
physical nature, is not unlimited, in spite of
evidence. God has imparted to the human soul a
marvellous strength in guarding its secrets, aud
he keeps at least the deepest and most inward
record for his own perusal. But if there be such
sympathies as we have alluded to, in how many
instances would History be put to the blush by a
volume of autograph letters, like this which we
now close!